Ministry of National Guard - Health Affairs Reaches Milestones Along Digital Health Transformation Journey

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of National Guard Health Affairs (MNGHA), a publicly funded and Joint Commission International-certified healthcare delivery system, has made great strides along its digital health transformation journey, which began in 2016 when the hospital system sought to meet HIMSS’s EMRAM Stage 6 requirements at King Abdulaziz Medical City – Riyadh. 

In 2022, King Abdulaziz Medical City – Riyadh became the first hospital in the world to achieve Stage 7 in four different models, making it one of the most mature digitally enabled care systems in the world.  

MNGHA serves some 1.3 million people, including Saudi National Guard service members and their families. A 3,720-bed enterprise, MNGHA offers outpatient services like primary and specialized healthcare, with a current capacity of about 3.2 million patient visits each year. Its healthcare professional workforce is large and diverse, comprising 13,000 multi-specialty physicians, nurses and allied healthcare providers from more than 45 countries. 

As a HIMSS Organizational Affiliate, MNGHA benefits from HIMSS’s health information and technology education, professional development resources and networking for the entire organization. Throughout 2023 in particular, MNGHA has progressed along its digital health transformation journey within several focus areas. 

No-Show Prediction at Outpatient Clinic 

This experience involves employing artificial intelligence techniques to proactively predict which patients are most likely to miss their appointments in outpatient clinics. This works by using machine learning techniques to process, analyze and train data in the electronic medical record (EMR) system that is related to patient, clinic, and appointment history. The result of the classification model will activate an alert for the treating physician in the EMR system, prompting them to take the appropriate action to address the patient at risk of missing an appointment. The solution recommends actions such as sending additional reminders to the patient and booking appointments for patient-in-waiting lists.